World Computer Chess Championship

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The World Computer Chess Championship (short: WCCC , German  "World Computer Chess Championship" ) is a first since 1974 every three years, and now instead held annually chess tournament to both computer - chess programs and chess computers are allowed. The WCCC is organized by the International Computer Games Association (short: ICGA , German  " International Computer Games Association " ) and is often carried out together with the Computer Olympiad .

The Shannon Trophy has traditionally been presented to the title winner since 1989 . This "Shannon trophy" ( photo under web links ), also called Shanny , half jokingly , has the shape of a chess knight . It is named after the American computer pioneer Claude Shannon (1916-2001), who is also self-developed chess programs and as "the father of computer chess" ( English the father of computer chess applies). The first time, Claude Shannon personally presented the trophy to Feng-hsiung Hsu , the developer of the winner Deep Thought (see photo under web links ).

History of the World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC)

After special computers with special hardware such as Belle , Cray Blitz and Deep Thought dominated the championship in the first few years , Fritz 3 succeeded for the first time in 1995 with software running on a commercially available PC to win the world title. Nothing has changed to this day.

The following table shows the past computer chess world championships and the respective title holders:

No. meeting venue Winning program developer Country of origin hardware
1. 5th-8th Aug 1974 Stockholm, Sweden Kaissa Mikhail Donskoy Russia British ICL 4/70 |
2. 7th-9th Aug 1977 Toronto, Canada Chess 4.6 David Slate, Larry Atkin United States CDC Cyber ​​176
3. 25-29 Sept 1980 Linz, Austria Belle Ken Thompson United States DEC PDP-11/23 + 1700 specialty chips developed by Ken Thompson
4th 22-25 Oct 1983 New York, USA Cray lightning Robert Hyatt United States Cray X-MP
5. 11-15 June 1986 Cologne, Germany Cray lightning Robert Hyatt United States Cray X-MP
6th 28–31 May 1989 Edmonton, Canada Deep thought Feng-hsiung Hsu , Thomas Anantharaman, Murray Campbell , Andreas Nowatzyk, Mike Browne United States Dual processor specialty chips developed by Feng-hsiung Hsu
7th 23-27 Nov 1992 Madrid, Spain ChessMachine ( Rebel ) Ed Schröder Netherlands Archimedes RISC
8th. 25-29 May 1995 Hong Kong Fritz 3 Frans Morsch Netherlands Pentium 90 MHz
9. 14.-19. June 1999 Paderborn, Germany Shredder Stefan Meyer-Kahlen Germany Pentium III 550 MHz
10. 6-11 June 2002 Maastricht, the Netherlands Deep Junior 7 Amir Ban, Shay Bushinsky Israel 2 Pentium 4 2.2 GHz
11. 22-29 Nov 2003 Graz, Austria Shredder Stefan Meyer-Kahlen Germany Dual Intel Xeon 3 GHz
12. 4th - 12th July 2004 Ramat-Gan, Israel Junior Amir Ban, Shay Bushinsky Israel 4 CPUs 2.2 GHz, Proliant HP
13. 13.-21. Aug 2005 Reykjavík, Iceland Zappa Anthony Cozzie United States 2 AMD Opteron dual core CPUs 2.2 GHz
14th May 25 - June 1, 2006 Turin, Italy Junior Amir Ban, Shay Bushinsky Israel 2 Intel Woodcrest dual core CPUs 3 GHz
15th 11-18 June 2007 Amsterdam, Netherlands Rybka Vasik Rajlich USA / Czech Republic 2 Intel Xeon X5355
16. Sep 28 - Oct 4, 2008 Beijing, China Rybka Vasik Rajlich USA / Czech Republic Cluster, 40 cores
17th 10-18 May 2009 Pamplona, ​​Spain Rybka Vasik Rajlich USA / Czech Republic Intel Xeon W5580 @ 3.2 GHz x 8
18th Sept 24 - Oct 1, 2010 Kanazawa, Japan Rybka Vasik Rajlich USA / Czech Republic 200 Nehalem EP Westmere, 2.93-3.6 GHz
19th 19.-23. Nov 2011 Tilburg, Netherlands Junior Amir Ban, Shay Bushinsky Israel Intel Xeon W5580 @ 3.2 GHz x 8
20th 12-17 Aug 2013 Yokohama, Japan Junior Amir Ban, Shay Bushinsky Israel Dual Intel Xeon i5, 2.7 GHz
21st June 29 - July 3, 2015 Leiden, Netherlands Jonny Johannes Zwanzger Germany 2400 cores, AMD x86-64 @ 2.8 GHz
22nd June 27th - July 1st, 2016 Leiden, Netherlands Komodo Don Dailey , Larry Kaufman , Mark Lefler United States 48 cores, Intel i7 @ 2.8 GHz
23. July 3 - July 7, 2017 Leiden, Netherlands Komodo Don Dailey, Larry Kaufman, Mark Lefler United States 60 cores, Intel Xeon E7-8890 v2 @ 2.8 GHz
24. July 12 - July 20, 2018 Stockholm, Sweden Komodo Don Dailey, Larry Kaufman, Mark Lefler United States 60 cores, Intel Xeon E7-8890 v2.2 4x15 cores @ 2.8 GHz
25th 13-16 Aug 2019 Macau, China Komodo Don Dailey, Larry Kaufman, Mark Lefler United States 128 cores used, 8 x Intel Xeon Platinum 8168 CPU @ 2.7 GHz, 32 GB RAM

Rybka and developer Vasik Rajlich lost all titles acquired since 2006 due to allegations of plagiarism and were excluded from all upcoming world championships.

Top Chess Engine Championship (TCEC)

The Top Chess Engine Championship was launched in 2010 (initially named Thoresen Computer Engines Competition after the name of its original organizer Martin Thoresen ). The TCEC is now also known as the Unofficial World Computer Chess Championship ( German  "Unofficial Computer Chess World Championship" ) because, in contrast to the WCCC, free chess programs also take part, such as the previous record winner Stockfish .

North American Computer Chess Championship (NACCC)

The first major computer chess championship, which took place before the World Computer Chess Championship , was the North American Championship , which was first organized in 1970. It was organized by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and mostly took place annually until 1994.

World Microcomputer Chess Championship (WMCCC)

In the period from 1980 to 2001 there was also a parallel world championship, to which only chess programs running on microprocessors (and not on mainframes) were permitted, the “microcomputer chess world championship” (“micro-world championship” for short). As with the "large" WCCC, the WMCCC also initially mastered special computers such as Mephisto . From 1992 the picture changed and the chess programs running on PC won the world title.

literature

  • Championship in Dallas in Computer Chess International (CSI), no. 2, 1983, pp 23-29.
  • World Championship in New York in CSI, No. 4, 1983, pp. 10-11.
  • Record participation in the Computer Chess World Championship in Computer Chess & Games (CSS), No. 3, 1986, pp. 18 / I – 18 / XII.

Web links

  • WCCC 2018 on the ICGA website
  • Photo by "Shanny"
  • Photo Feng-hsiung Hsu receives the trophy from the hand of Claude Shannon (1989)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ T. Anthony Marsland , Jonathan Schaeffer : Computers, Chess, and Cognition. Springer , 1990, p. 36, ISBN 978-1-4613-9082-4 .
  2. ↑ WCCC 2017, accessed October 30, 2017
  3. ↑ WCCC 2018 | ICGA. Retrieved October 25, 2018 (American English).
  4. ↑ WCCC 2019 | ICGA. Retrieved November 13, 2019 (American English).
  5. ^ Andrew Soltis : Engine Super Bowl. New York Post, accessed August 30, 2020 .
  6. ↑ A new age in computer chess? Lc0 beats Stockfish! Accessed August 30, 2020 (English).